I'm gonna talk about this episode in detail but at the very bottom... I have the entire episode available for your viewing if you wanna watch it first then read my thoughts & opinions ^_^
If you have heard about it, then you know that this anime has been every fangirls fantasy for almost a year and finally, FINALLY, the first episode aired on July 3rd (Yea, I'm a little late...)!
The main character's name is Nanase Haruka. Haru is absolutely addicted to water. Any chance he gets to be suspended in water - he takes it. He even wears his swimming gear all the time; even when he bathes! The first few minutes into this episode is a flash back introducing his "best friends", Makoto and Nagisa, and a new kid (Well, new to the swim club) named Rin in elementary school.
Now he's 17 and it seems he hasn't swam the same way (in a swimming club or relay) since then. From the way they show his attitude and how he relates everything involving swimming to a memory attached to Rin, it's safe to assume he has a lot of resentment toward Rin for leaving Japan for Australia (in pursuit of being a olympic swimmer). It's kind of like betrayal*. Haru & his friends decide to visit a their old swim club before it's torn down & whaddya know? Rin just so happens to be visiting too. Immediately they run to race... but there's no water in the pool. The way they talk to each other is like a love/hate relationship filled with competitiveness which makes it a little difficult on my end to decipher how to interpret their relationship.
*I'm assuming that Haru is an authentic swimmer; he swims because he loves the water and how it makes him feel but Rin is more of a competitive asshole who like to show off & prove how much better he is than anyone around him (He's even in a top notch school made specifically for swimmers!). Simply put, I can see that Haru loves swimming but it feels like he tries to hide his love for it because maybe Rin is his rival & he always outshines him? Maybe he doesn't feel worthy anymore after the squabble they had as children (They keep talking about how Rin showed them "Something you've never seen before", but they just kinda leave us hanging all the way up to the end of the episode... making us wait lol)? They show a scene where they make a time capsule that holds a trophy they won together & before the actual race, they're stand around a tree that has brocks labled with "friends forever", "For the team!", and so on... I'm gonna go ahead and guess that Rin pretty much makes a habit of disrespecting these guys and/or fucking them over.
The water is beautiful, the music is upbeat, I love the opening for both style & song choice, and the art style is cute & easy on the eyes. The outro is as great as the intro... I just don't understand why there is a small snippet that shows them dancing in a club with gimps lol. All in all, this appears to be the start of an awesome summer anime!
Enjoy!
Episode 1 - Reunion at the Starting Block
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